Fried Chicken
by NullNoMore
Summary: There's a new restaurant in New Los Angeles! Only the Nopon are making it difficult to get any fried chicken. Fried evello. You get the idea. This shouldn't be a crisis. We can handle yet one more loss after two years of losses, right? Swears, silliness, feels, and too many OCs. All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but Lila and Gino are mine.
1. Kentucky Fried Disaster

**a/n: There is a new restaurant in NLA, but it is not all that it is promised. People are disappointed.**

 **Pre chapter 5, hard swears (add more, I redacted a lot), silliness and feels.**

 **All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but Gino, Lila, the station and Miran KFC are mine.**

* * *

"You gotta admit, we need to change up the hours, at least a little," whined Gino.

Lila and her assistant manager had been going in circles, for days it seemed, trying to come up with a roster that satisfied both the fluctuating needs of the #1 Sakuraba Auxiliary Skell Refueling Station and also the employees' desire for a regular work schedule. Or, in other words, business had been irregular but usually booming on the Fridays that Gino had (or hoped to have) a hot date.

She sighed and tugged absently at the end of her braid. "If we make those changes, even just for the weekends, we'll end up in the red. I can't keep posting emergency temp requests on the Mission Board."

"I been telling ya, we need more staff, Lila."

She shook her head steadily. "There's not enough manpower in the city to keep even the base jobs filled. Finding a part-timer will be tricky. Until we find the Lifehold, or maybe some other population, we're in trouble."

"Nopon, maybe?" But even Gino, desperate as he was to have days off, couldn't continue that suggestion. Their eyes met and they snorted in unison.

"I don't know. Maybe as a receptionist, but I don't see how that would…" Lila cut off her sentence at the jingle of her comm device. _She's a brick house she's mighty mighty she's …_ Lila whipped it out and flipped it open with a snap. A blonde, mustachioed image glared up at her.

"Commander," she greeted the caller with assumed surprise. "What can I do for you?" She tried to speak calmly while at the same time flicking her hand repeatedly at Gino in dismissal. She ignored the tech's rude remarks as he slumped off.

Commander Vandham didn't answer at once. The way his eyebrows were rising and falling hinted at some strong emotion, one barely under control. "Brown, I'm in trouble," he said shortly, his voice almost a whisper.

Lila peered at her screen for a second, then switched it to sound only and cradled it to her ear. She turned her back on the station, on the city, and focused only on his voice. She hadn't recognized the small room behind him before she'd changed the format – not his office or the command center, certainly not the open Outfitters hangar or any of the well-appointed meeting rooms of the industrialists' quarters. A closet maybe? Or store room? Something like adrenaline shot through her body. How bad was the trouble that he needed to hide? She forced herself not to tremble. "Anything I can do?" she asked with false calm.

"Nothing. Not a damn thing. Except tell me to pull myself together and get over it."

She closed her eyes and listened intently. He sounded almost on the point of breaking. "What's the matter, sir?"

The sigh on the other end was long and deep, and the breath that followed was far from steady. "Nothing. Nothing's wrong."

"Something about BLADE? An … attack?" she hazarded.

Vandham responded with a mirthless chuckle. His voice strengthened. "Brown, that's just what I needed. A little perspective. No, no attacks, not even a fist fight. Just an old man's inability to take a little disappointment. Sorry to bug you."

"Oh no you don't!" she snapped. "Do NOT hang up on me, sir."

His voice grew warmer, holding almost his normal humor. "Got you curious?"

"Curiosity kills more than cats. I will expire in front of BLADE tower, in the messiest way possible, if you even THINK of hanging up on me." She waited, terrified that he would do just that. _Something_ was wrong. Even if it wasn't lighting up the tower with red, it was important enough to have rattled the Commander.

Another gusty sigh battered her ear. "I took Lin and Tatsu out for fried chicken."

She nodded, then realized he couldn't see her response. "The new place that's modelled after KFC, I'm guessing." She smiled slightly. He'd never admit to it, but all of NLA knew he spoiled those two.

"Yeah, that one. Promised them fried chicken, but when we got there, the place was shut. Not shut, exactly, but they aren't selling chicken. There's some kind of meat shortage."

"How frustrating," she said evenly. "I thought we'd left all that behind, on the Whale." She stopped, not wanting to criticize their ship, even with its continual shortages and resulting monotonous mess hall food. She still mourned the White Whale, dreamed of it at times and woke desolate. It felt disloyal to appreciate the influx of fresh food that the colony now enjoyed. Or usually enjoyed.

"Something about a Nopon protection racket, and I swear, fluffy heads are gonna roll by the time I'm done. Main point: no chicken, no lickin', and I can't buy the kids lunch."

She hesitated, before giving a measured suggestion. "You could always get them burgers at Rosemoss."

"It's not the same," he interrupted, and to her horror, his voice almost cracked with emotion. He was back to whispering. "I'd planned this day since I heard the joint was opening. I'd been looking forward to it, Lila, and god help me but I'm hiding in the bathroom, trying not to lose my shit. I gotta keep strong. All the damn time." His ending grunt was close to a gasp.

Lila's golden-brown eyes flickered under her eyelids. "It's a meat shortage, correct? Nothing more?"

Another gusty sigh, and a stronger, wry tone. "They're frying everything else under the sun, from zucchini to rock orange. But my heart's not in it. Your advice is right. Burgers it is," he said with resignation.

"Ten minutes." Lila's voice was high and tight, but clear. "Figure a way to stall for ten minutes, sir. I'll see what I can do."

"You got chicken at your station?"

"I've noticed some loose Nopon. I'll call you in ten minutes."

She blew past a surprised Gino, racing across the wide track of pavement and along the busy skell repair bays of the official administrative hangar. She sprinted almost to the end, with its mysterious doors locking away a restricted area, but instead swerved right and doubled back, bounding up the ramp that lead to the Harrier's staging camp. She skidded to a stop in front of a tall and broad soldier, standing beyond the briefing tents. As she had been relying on, he was waiting there, drinking his standard thermos of coffee (in truth, hot chocolate, shhh, tell no one), as he always did between missions.

She was breathless, not with exertion but with hurry. "Barrett. Got a job for you. Evello, two of them, bring them back, 5 minutes."

The BLADE didn't quite do a spit-take, but he shook his close-cut head with surprise. "Uh … I'm waiting on a mission in about an hour from now," he began.

"I know. You dumped your skell at my station. It finished refueling a couple minutes ago, so you're good to go. Evello," she repeated. "Now."

"Lila, that's not really something in my wheelhouse."

"What's the problem? You're a Harrier. You kill things. Go kill me two of those oversized ostriches prancing around outside the city gate. It shouldn't even take 5 minutes. Go!"

He'd decided to take that exact moment to check his comm device. Lila could have screamed with frustration. "I don't see it on the mission board app," he said with agonizing deliberation.

Lila tried to add 10 cm to her height and 50 kg to her voice. "It's not on the mission board. Strictly private, dead easy, and I will pay the half day rate for Primordia sub-15 missions, but only if you're back here in four minutes."

"What else?" He sounded suspicious, but to her delight, he'd put away his comm device and was picking up his helmet.

"Four minutes, Barrett, and I will tell everyone I know what a great job you did."

"Huh." He didn't sound impressed.

"Trust me. You want the grass roots campaign I can do for you. Just, please," and for a second she was pleading in earnest, "please do this for me."

"Two evello. Ten minutes. Hen or tom?"

"Hen, please, if you can swing it. Six minutes. Go!"

She'd paced the full boundary of the refueling station at least 50 times when the freight elevator rumbled down, bearing a skell with the distinctive blue and white markings common to the Harrier division. She forced herself to wait until the skell halted and the pilot had disembarked before she started tugging at the storage compartment. Barrett came up alongside her, watching with arms crossed. "Five minutes, more or less," he commented smugly. "I'll take my credits now."

"You'll get them when I have time," Lila said, not sparing him a glance. She pulled several emergency deep cold packs out of the skell's "trunk", only to stop and marvel at the neatly butchered meat, wrapped in remarkably sanitary-looking plastic. "Barrett, this is … words fail me."

"Good thing you hired me. I didn't spend two summers sweating in a packing plant for nothing."

"It's perfect."

He smiled at her with embarrassed pride. "It's what you wanted?"

She grabbed three bundles, enough for a large armload. "Get Gino to store the rest. I _will_ pay you, just, I really need to be somewhere."

She pulled out her comm device and awkwardly tapped out a message, _keep stalling on my way_. Then she launched herself at the Commercial District. If she could just run fast enough, not think about it, maybe she could ….

Lila crumpled at the edge of the roadway, where the sunlight finally could slip past the protective overhang of the Administrative District. She fell to her knees as if she'd bounced off an invisible wall. Clutching the chilly meat to her stomach with one hand, she wiped the even colder sweat off her face. She bounced to her feet, but the force field of her agoraphobia wouldn't let her take one step further.

… _stupid idea pointless he doesn't need your help anyway it's just fried chicken no biggie it can be dinner get barrett to take it it doesn't matter what did you think was going to happen that sky will come down and crush you like the miserable spider that you are give up give up don't worry he doesn't need your help anyway worthless stupid what were you thinking he doesn't need fried chicken what's so special he can have it any other day any other month so give up and save yourself he doesn't need …_

Lila swayed, stunned, but two words danced free of the vicious monologue. "Day." "Month." She struggled to remember today's date. A date, and a note on a personnel file, one of the thousands she'd reviewed during the long and at times boring voyage on the Whale (reviewed earlier, on Earth), a date of birth, at the top of a file in the engineering records, a record for the Whale's chief engineer, for the Chief. Now promoted to Commander of BLADE, doing his best to keep the city afloat, just like he'd kept the ship in the sky. The Chief's birthday, and he'd been planning on sharing a special treat with Lin Lee, the closest thing he had to family, on probably the first and only normal afternoon he'd had since arriving on this planet.

… _it's just a little disappointment he can still enjoy the day the chicken can be later and …._

Lila wasn't listening. Scrunching her eyes tight, her whole face fixed with concentration, she swung her head forward, almost head butting the air in front of her. The momentum was enough to throw her balance forward, into the deadly open space. It was either fall or start running. A trick she'd learned on Earth, when the fault in her mim first became obvious and it had been a matter of life or death to overcome it. If she had a clear enough goal, and enough speed at the start, she could race to any spot successfully, although she wouldn't remember a single step until she reached her destination.

Cxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxc

It is a remarkable fact that Mira has exactly 13 native herbs and spices, the exact quantity for perfect fried chicken. No one can explain this happy accident. Just one more special something about this planet.

* * *

 **a/n: There was a tweet about the current Kentucky Fried Chicken crisis in England, where a grandfather was in tears (almost) over not being able to take the kids out for dinner. Someone on the XCX Tumblr discord said it was Vandham & Lin. Then they pinged me. I stayed up until 2am writing this. I love that board.**

 **Next up: This story was done. Then my brain said no. Lila & Jack have coffee and Nagi has a late gift.**


	2. Belated Gifts

**a/n: Jack needs to get something off his chest. He also gets two unexpected gifts.**

 **Much less exciting, also fewer swears. Gratuitous Nagi, because I can.**

 **All the good things belong to Monolith Soft.**

* * *

It had been almost a week since the Kentucky Fried Disaster. When Lila had texted him to hang tight, he'd done his best to distract Lin and her weird Nopon sidekick, a ridiculously easy task. He'd pinned a fake smile on his face and asked Lin if she was developing any new recipes. Lin had started her middle school stand-up routine of mock threats to cook Tatsu, and Tatsu had pretended to want to hide under the table or flee the city. This was enough to keep them amused for hours, in his experience. All he had to do was chuckle at the right moments.

Meanwhile, he'd kept a casual eye on the front door of the restaurant, and a casual ear open for different noise from the kitchen. The sudden shift in activity behind the swinging doors leading to the back, the hurried conference between owner and cashier, those were the hints that Lila'd done the thing, whatever that was. Turned out to be a simple thing: poultry delivery, unexpected and gratis, on the condition that the Commander and his guests be served before the supply ran out. He'd tried to pay for the dinner (one drumstick plate for Lin, two Happy Happy Nopon Meals for the growing boy, and the Sunday special for himself, with mashed potatoes and fried okra, naturally) but the owner refused, even giving him a coupon for the next month (provided they managed to stay in business after this embarrassment).

That had been over the weekend. Now it was Thursday, and he was still waiting for the weekly report on fuel usage at the Sakuraba Refueling Stations, of which there was currently only one. Lila hadn't shown up at the appointed time of 0600. He tapped his comm device. 0621 and he needed to leave soon. He should have left already, to be honest; they'd missed connections before and she'd shot him a text version of the combined report/prediction/request, usually too lengthy because she tended to nail down every detail in print when she could skim over those face to face. He didn't move from the café table. Some things you had to do in person.

Another minute passed, and he spotted her at the end of Barista Alley, sprinting down the length, slicing through the thin crowd. She didn't slow down when she reached his table, sliding into the opposite seat with enough momentum to make it rock several degrees off center. "Sorry, sorry," she said, already trying to pass her comm device to him. "I'll send you the numbers, but the short of it is …"

"Hold on." He blocked the electronics with an open hand and pushed it gently back at her. "I need to apologize first."

She stopped suddenly and looked at him with innocent but attentive eyes. "Apologize? For what?"

"I pulled you into my mess last weekend. Wasn't fair, and I'm sorry to put you through it."

She looked blank for a moment longer, then smiled suddenly. The silver slivers lurking in her brown eyes flared. Then she looked away, shaking her head.

"You laughing at me?" He deserved it, he knew.

"No, not at all, sir." She stared at him solemnly, but the sparkles were still there. "I'm just amused that this is the second apology I've been involved in this morning, and neither were anything I wanted."

"Someone else done you wrong?"

"Opposite thing, sir. My best tech has been sulking since the weekend. I finally shook it out of him, and it turns out he was hurt because I'd kept him out of the loop. About the evello, etc. I didn't really think there'd been a loop to be in, since it was over and done with in under an hour, but to use his words, I had disrespected him. I think I calmed him down, but it took a while. He'd been stewing on it."

"God god, you didn't tell him …" Vandham started in horror.

She shrugged and looked innocent. "I told him the truth. The restaurant had messed up and you didn't want to disappoint the kids. Gino may swear like a …" She struggled for an adequate description.

"A sailor," suggested Vandham.

"Well, like _some_ sailors I know, I suppose, but not all," she said, pointedly. "Anyway, he may sound rude, but he's got a soft spot for Lin. Maybe out of solidarity against shared enemies." Vandham raised a heavy eyebrow at her, and her grin sneaked out into the open. "Hector. He doesn't care for Hector."

Vandham tried not to let himself be distracted by the simmering feud between Lila & Co. and the smartass Pathfinder. He took a deep breath and restarted his apology firmly. "Lila. I had no business asking you to listen to my breakdown. I need to keep my own head together, not drag other people into it. I can't keep failing like that."

She frowned at him, looking very severe. "You lost it for 90 seconds, sir. Total. It wasn't a big deal, and your deciding to call me is proof of that. You called me. Me. Most unimportant person you probably have as a contact. And you were over it before the conversation was half done, and certainly before I'd said anything helpful. I was just a way of marking time, and I'm glad I could do that."

"It wasn't fair to you."

"Sir," she interrupted, then paused. She stared at him with an expression he couldn't quite read, but it looked a little like fear. "If you can't call your friends to vent, who can you call?"

"Huh. Calling a friend."

"Yes. Calling a friend," she repeated uncertainly.

"Good. I like that," he murmured. "Lemme return you the favor. Call me if you ever lose your, uh, composure." He smiled involuntarily. And was stunned by the brilliance of her returning smile. This back and forth of smiles continued, wordlessly, until suddenly her face shifted into the most blank and formal expression he'd seen short of official briefings.

"That's all there is, sir," she snapped. "As I said, I'll send you the details today. Thank you for your time."

He almost replied, "Dismissed," out of ship's routine, but managed to stop himself at the last moment. She retrieved her comm device, rose, and walked quickly past him. A few moments later, over his shoulder he heard her voice again, a little too clearly. "Good morning, Secretary Nagi, sir."

Vandham thus had a few seconds warning, but he didn't manage to wipe the relaxed smile off his face. The Secretary of Defense looked down at the Commander of the BLADE forces and very distinctly did not roll his eyes. "I thought there was an all-hands division meeting this morning."

"It won't hurt 'em to start without me for once. Gives them a chance to get their stories straight. There's been a little too much cocky behavior recently, based on the skell repair orders."

The Secretary nodded in understanding. He added, casually, "I neglected to wish you happy birthday. I hope you enjoyed your weekend?"

"Yup. Took Lin and the potato out for lunch. Pretty nice." Vandham rose and stretched nonchalantly.

"Any surprise gifts?"

"No-ooo, not much," Vandham replied slowly. "Maybe a small one. Maybe two, although damned if I can tell you what they were."

"I was mistaken. I had assumed you were thinking about exactly that. You were smiling quite as much as if you'd just short-sheeted Chausson's bed."

Vandham barked with laughter. "Goddammit, Nagi, don't do this to me. You know I won't have a moment's rest until I manage that, somehow."

"Consider it a belated birthday gift. One that I will deny all knowledge of."

* * *

 **a/n: And if I write the story of the prank, I will not be surprised. It will involve Ma-non, eventually, because although this is pre Chapter 5, it isn't much before it.**


End file.
